Follow up to my “vote” post

I’m ready to get on with my normal assortment of baseball card posts, but since I did write that post about the election earlier this week, I just want to tie up that loose end. Some of you might be wondering what my reaction to the election was. I’ll warn you though – if you weren’t happy with the outcome, you probably don’t want to read the rest of this post.

When the West Coast polls closed and Wolf Blitzer announced that Barack Obama had surpassed 270 electoral votes and was now the President-elect of the United States, the cheering in my living room was even louder than it was after Akinori Iwamura recorded the last out of this year’s ALCS. Of course, it helped that my wife and mother-in-law were there watching it with me. I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of my country than I was on Tuesday night. We’re closing the book on one of the worst Presidencies of all time (which I don’t think is a controversial thing to say even for Republicans) and I believe that our new leader can be one of the best of all-time.

Not only that, but the state that I call home, North Carolina, gave its electoral votes to the Democratic nominee for the first time in 32 years! That made the victory even sweeter. I’ll be honest – when I first moved to North Carolina in 2001, I had my reservations about moving to a state that was once part of the confederacy and that had elected Jesse Helms, a detestable bigot, to the Senate five times. The state was definitely making progress though. We also had an intelligent young Senator named John Edwards, who represented N.C. very well as the 2004 Vice-Presidential nominee. I moved to the Research Triangle area (comprised of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill), which is the most liberal part of the state. I knew that it was only a matter of time before this red state would become a blue state, and I’m very proud that it happened this year! Not only did Obama win here, but we ousted one of the least effective Senators in the country, the odious Elizabeth Dole, and replaced her with a great new leader in Kay Hagan. We also elected the first female governor in N.C. history, Bev Perdue. She has great plans for improving education and teacher pay, and since my wife is a teacher, we’re very happy about that.

Anyway, I’ll try not to write much more about politics in the future, but this year’s election was so momentous that I couldn’t help myself…